waiting for the train

CARRIEDO STATION, AUGUST 2002 - The wind came foreboding, like suppressed whimper of a suicidal child. The cold dusk seeps through my spine. The sky is overcast. Neon lights barely perceptible in a night shrouded with a dark mantle. From my view, I could see the outline of the building like a giant monolith, doleful in the gloomy sky.

Lightning crashes.

I see shadows darting across the opaque and rickety metals and walls darkened by soot and dirt. Yonder, I see the spires of the San Sebastian church, the cross of the Quiapo church stab the sky. The protruding iron bars of under constructed flyover, and the dangling shards and barbed wire of dilapidated buildings violently slash the rotten street.

The street bleeds drowning the streets. Clogged canals cough and spurt gore. I smell the stench of moist decaying flesh. Human cannibals lustily came. Manholes sputter swarms of roaches and rodents hunting for the cadaver.

The earth shakes as thunder roars like furious beast.

Silence.

I hear the beggar serenades in a song, whimpering in hunger. I drop a coin. The clang reverberates in his empty McDonald’s cup, haunting like vesper bells.

The train comes and like a giant hungry maggot consumes the rotten Avenida.